Report: ICE isn’t always taking steps needed for detainees’ health care

Topline: Taxpayers spent $400 million last year on medical services at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention centers, but a new report shows that ICE isn’t always taking the steps necessary to care for those in its custody.

Forty-nine of the 52 deaths — 94 percent — reported by ICE detention centers from 2017 to 2021 were “preventable” or “possibly preventable,” according to medical experts working for the non-partisan Physicians for Human Rights. An additional 15 detainees died between 2021 and June 2024.

Key facts: Medical experts found that for 88 percent of the 52 deaths, ICE’s medical team “made incorrect, inappropriate or incomplete diagnoses.”

The report claims that ICE’s medical oversight is “critically flawed” because the agency does little to prevent future deaths or punish those responsible.

ICE has not terminated its contracts with any of the detention centers where deaths occurred, and only three were fined, according to the report, which was also conducted with the American Civil Liberties Union and American Oversight.

Meanwhile, the private prison companies that run most ICE detention centers continue to reap huge profits from the government. The corporate GEO Group made over $1 billion from ICE in 2022, and CoreCivic made $552 million, according to the report.

In two instances where officials tried to speak with eyewitnesses to on-site deaths, ICE released the witnesses from detention hours before their scheduled interviews. In two other cases, detention centers destroyed video evidence of detainees’ deaths, the report stated.

Another detainee said in Spanish that she “felt like she was dying,” but staffers mistranslated her pleas and thought she was going to commit suicide. They placed her in solitary confinement instead of sending her to a doctor, and she later died of liver failure.

At a facility in Michigan, one detainee collapsed on the floor of the medical wing. Video footage showed a nurse texting on her cellphone for almost three hours instead of checking on the man, who died of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage, the report stated.

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Background: ICE has a budget of $9.8 billion this year, of which $3.4 billion is for detaining and holding suspected illegal immigrants. The agency expects to hold 41,500 people in detention centers on any given day this year. During the Biden-Harris administration, nearly 10 million illegal entrants have crossed American borders.

Most medical care is provided by the ICE Health Service Corps, which had $352 million in funding last year, per budget documents. Another $47.8 million was spent on third-party medical services.

Summary: ICE’s budget should go toward initiatives that actually protect our border, and facilities that are incapable of caring for their detainees should be reformed or dumped.

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